A Witch and Her Minotaur (Coven Crest Academy #2)

Chapter 1

lyra

EARLY-AUTUMN SUNLIGHT BEATS DOWN ON the glass greenhouse, turning the air an almost insufferable blend of sweltering and muggy.

My forehead is damp with perspiration, and my hair sticks to the back of my neck, making me even more irritable as I try to painstakingly pluck weeds from a raised bed of midnight lotus flowers without damaging their extremely delicate petals and root systems.

I pinch a small—but formidable—weed between my forefinger and thumb and tug. Nothing happens.

Going to be difficult, huh?

I tug again. The weed holds fast.

My brow furrows, and a touch of heat goes through me as my irritation mounts.

For the life of me, I have no idea why I opted to take Exotic Flora as my elective this semester. I don’t even like flowers and plants that much.

Oh, wait.

My eyes cut across the greenhouse to one of my roommates, Alina Ravenscroft.

The princess has her long blue hair braided back from her face, and she’s intently studying a cluster of pink-veined flowers—I can’t remember their name.

Her knight and fated mate, Raelan Ashvale, stands outside the greenhouse.

I glower at the back of his head as the breeze outside tousles his tunic.

I wish I could open a window. I’m about to melt into a puddle in here.

The other students don’t seem to be struggling quite as much as I am.

Some are even wearing their academy-appointed robes still, seeming unbothered by the heat.

My fire magic keeps me a comfortable temp even in the cold, but it also makes me overheat easily.

And right now, I’m about to self-combust.

As if to punctuate my discomfort, a bead of sweat runs down my back.

So gross. All I want is a cold bath.

I tear my gaze away from Raelan and focus once more on my mortal enemy: the damn weed.

Yet again, I give it a tug. And yet again, it resists me with herculean strength.

With a scowl and a flare of irritation, I grab a garden trowel from the cart beside me, jab it into the soil, and pry the weed out of the bed.

And accidentally uproot an entire midnight lotus flower in the process.

The plant—beautiful and exotic and more delicate than a soap bubble—lies atop the garden soil, its petals already starting to lose their lustrous gleam as it withers before my very eyes.

I wasn’t supposed to do that. Professor Fleur already warned me to be careful, and my grade in this class isn’t looking good, even this early in the semester.

Maybe that’s because I’m a fire witch. I don’t have any business being in a garden, especially around baby-soft plants that die if you so much as look at them the wrong way.

“Ouch,” says a student next to me. I don’t know his name. I don’t care to. “Murdered another one, huh? You’re savage, Wilder.”

He and his friend laugh.

The midnight lotus continues to wilt.

Another drop of sweat goes down my back.

I hate this.

And suddenly, my hands are smoking. The next thing I know, they’ve gone up in flames from my fingertips to my wrists, and the dying midnight lotus is already smoldering, caught too close to my sparks.

It happens almost before I can blink.

The fire leaps from one flower to the next, growing, smoking, chewing up each and every delicate petal in its path.

“Shit!” the boy next to me snaps, jumping back from the raised bed and lifting an arm to shield his face as if that’ll protect him from the flames.

I reach out a hand, trying to calm the flames, to coax them into submission, but they don’t listen to me. They never listen to me. I’m just their conduit.

All I succeed in doing is sending out another burst of fire, and the other students working around this raised bed yelp and jump away, their frightened expressions painted in red and orange from my flickering flames.

Now the whole bed of exotic plants is burning.

“Professor!” someone yells. I don’t know who. It doesn’t matter. It’s not like our professor wasn’t going to notice. I’m never that lucky.

All I can do is watch as the flames demolish every living thing in their path.

And it’s already too late when Alina sends a burst of frost dancing across my flames, smothering them in cold.

She successfully puts out the fire—impressive, considering she struggles with her magic almost as much as I struggle with mine—but what’s left behind can’t be saved.

“Miss Wilder!” Professor Fleur whips around the end of the bed, a mixture of anger, horror, and grief twisting her delicate features.

The other students step away from me, giving me a wide berth, like they’re afraid to be associated with the impulsive fire witch who leaves nothing but ash in her path.

I get it. I don’t want to be associated with me either.

Against my chest, tucked inside my white button-down, my spirit companion, Juniper, shifts, climbing up to peek over my collar to see what I’ve done.

At least she’s still here with me. No matter how many times I mess up, she’s still my friend. Her warm furry body gives me comfort, even if I’m still burning up from the sun and the stifling air and now my flames and the smoking remains of Professor Fleur’s pretty little flowers.

The professor whirls around to face me. Her dark cheeks flare with a touch of red, and her pale green eyes go misty. These flowers are her babies; I get it. So I also get it when she seethes, “Kindly take yourself to the headmistress’s office. Now.”

Over the professor’s shoulder, Alina frowns, her forehead furrowed.

“Sorry,” she mouths at me.

But this isn’t her fault. It’s mine. Like always.

I grab my academy robe—trimmed in yellow now that I’m a second-year—and stride from the greenhouse amidst stares and whispers from my fellow classmates.

It makes my skin crawl, and I resist the urge to scrunch my shoulders up to my ears in shame, opting instead to lift my chin and stalk past them as if their words and sharp expressions don’t leave wounds in their wake.

Shoving the door to the greenhouse open, I’m greeted by a chill breeze, and it immediately cools the sweat snaking down my back. Raelan looks down at me, one brow arched quizzically.

“Don’t ask,” I snap.

His expression doesn’t change. “Okay, I won’t.”

Now that he and Alina are together together—as in she wears his shifter claiming mark like her most prized diamond necklace and told us that she’s going to marry him once we graduate—Raelan has become a lot more talkative, and he’s not nearly so cold and stoic.

He’s actually fun to be around . . . sometimes.

But I don’t feel like talking right now, even to him.

I start across the exterior gardens, and Raelan calls out, “You’ve got some dirt on your face.”

With a grumble, I angrily reach up to scrub it away with the heel of my palm. At the same time, Juniper wriggles around and climbs up onto my shoulder, where she hides herself beneath my messy curls.

“Are you okay?” she asks. If anyone else were to hear her, they’d just hear little rat chirps and chattering. Witches can communicate with their own spirit companions, but not with anyone else’s.

“I’m fine.” My loafers strike the stone as I ascend the stairs to the side entrance into Coven Crest Academy. Another witch—a first-year, judging by her blue-trimmed robe—is just exiting the building and squeaks in surprise as I shoulder past her and into the cool hallways of the academy.

“You’re not,” Juniper says. She knows me too well to be so easily tricked.

But I’m not in the mood to talk about it.

Though I’m pretty sure Headmistress Moonhart isn’t going to give me the option to say no.

THIS ISN’T MY FIRST TIME in the headmistress’s office. It’s not even my second. Last time I was in here, it was for very nearly burning the library down. That was a close call. My nerves still spike when I think of how close I came to destroying everything.

Headmistress Moonhart sits at her wide mahogany desk, a thin pair of spectacles perched upon her nose.

She draws a quill across a piece of parchment, the scratch of the sharp tip meeting with the ticking of the clock standing atop the mantel and the low crackle of flames from the hearth.

The big windows let in bright yellow-gold sunlight, and leaves twirl past the glass, caught in an autumn breeze.

A thin strand of smoke twines from a lit stick of sage sitting on the desk.

Seated in a chair across the desk from the headmistress, I knot my fingers in my lap and try not to let my leg bounce like crazy.

Juniper shifts inside the pocket of my robe, which I’m now wearing despite the warmth in the office.

Thought it would better my chances if I at least tried to make myself look presentable, though I can feel how frizzy my curly hair is from the mugginess in the greenhouse. Nothing to be done about it now.

With a quick flourish, the headmistress signs her name on the parchment, then gives it a moment to dry before folding it up and sealing it with purple wax.

She holds the letter up, and the great horned owl who was resting on a perch near the windows swoops over and snatches the letter from her fingers.

“Thank you, Barron.” The headmistress twirls her fingers, and the door to her office opens with a brush of air magic.

Barron spreads his wings, and with the letter clutched in his beak, he soars from the room. Once he’s gone, the headmistress closes the door with another brush of magic.

“So, Miss Wilder.” She leans back in her chair and removes the spectacles from the bridge of her nose. “Care to tell me why you’re here?”

“Not particularly,” I whisper, choosing to stare at one of Barron’s feathers sitting atop her desk rather than looking into her sharp blue eyes.

She lets out a small but unsurprised sigh. “I suggest you tell your side of the story before whichever professor sent you here arrives to tell me themselves.” With an arch of her brow, she lifts her teacup and takes a delicate sip.

I picture Professor Fleur’s teary eyes, the anger twisting her face when she saw that I’d decimated her precious midnight lotus flowers. She’s going to have a whole lot to say when she gets here after class.

And I realize the headmistress has a point.

“I was in my Exotic Flora class . . .”

Headmistress Moonhart tips her head.

“And it was hot as hell—”

“Language, Miss Wilder.”

“And the weeds were refusing to budge, and I accidentally uprooted an entire flower, and then . . .”

The heat curling through me. The flames. The smoke rising from the exotic little flowers as they succumbed to the fire.

“And then I accidentally . . . set fire to a flower. Well, an entire bed of midnight lotus flowers.”

Headmistress Moonhart’s eyes go wide, a furrow forming in her forehead. Then she shakes her head and lets out a breath. “Tala loves those flowers,” she says softly, but I’m not sure she intends for me to respond.

“I didn’t mean to, I swear. It just . . . happened.”

Like all my accidents. Like setting fire to the bed curtains last year. Like almost burning the library down. Like the many instances of setting my books aflame only to hurriedly smother the flames and hope no one smells the smoke.

The headmistress sets her teacup down. “This isn’t the first accident you’ve had this year.” Her fingertips find her temple. “Goddess only knows how lucky we are that the library didn’t go up in flames.”

Why’d she have to go and bring that up? As if I’m not already thinking of the last time I was in here, the sharp scolding I received, the earful I got about all the irreplaceable ancient tomes and how priceless they are.

“At least flowers can be regrown,” I grumble, still striving not to meet the headmistress’s eyes.

“Yes, they can. But that’s not the point. The point, Miss Wilder . . .”

She pauses until I finally meet her gaze.

“Is that your fire is erratic, not under your control. It’s a danger to you and all the other students.” Her eyes soften as she regards me. “And you recall what we discussed last time you were here?”

Again, how could I forget?

“Yes,” I grumble. “Expulsion.”

The word tastes rancid on my tongue. Papa would be so disappointed in me.

I worked so hard to get here, and I’ll never forget the day my acceptance letter arrived, the tears of joy and pride in my father’s eyes, the little bit of wood dust caught in his beard from whatever project he’d been working on that day.

I can’t get expelled, no matter what.

“Then you know it’s imperative you get your magic under control,” Headmistress Moonhart continues.

“I’m trying. I promise I’m trying.” My fingers twine tighter in my lap. “But . . . it’s not working.”

I’ve tried meditating with Maeve in the mornings, have tried breathing exercises and visualization and cold baths and everything else that’s been suggested to me.

It still doesn’t work. I’m too quick to temper, and my flames are even quicker.

They have a mind of their own and enjoy listening to authority about as much as I do—which is to say, not at all.

The headmistress hums thoughtfully. She stands from her desk, and her long plum gown looks soft and silky as butter as she walks to the window and looks out at the autumn landscape. The sunlight turns her blue eyes an even paler shade.

I’m not sure what she’s looking at, but her lips quirk up a bit, and she turns to regard me with a smile. “I think I know just the thing.”

I try not to sink in my chair. I have I feeling I’m really not going to like this.